


Collisions of a Dying Star

by deslea



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 00:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9408548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: The gleam in Gellert's eyes tells dark truths, of two stars sharing an orbit, stars dark and molten. Stars drawn ever inward, collapsing on one another. Stars that collide and explode. Set after Fantastic Beasts.





	

  
_[Never Be Over](http://deslea.deviantart.com/art/Never-Be-Over-Albus-and-Gellert-658517546) by deslea at deviantart_  
  

"I don't like the hair. It makes you look old."

It is probably the only thing he could say that might really hurt Gellert, and it does.

"Ouch," Gellert smirks now, with mirth around his eyes that seems to congratulate him on landing a blow, but there is a flicker in his cheek, too. Just a flicker. It's his tell.

"I suppose you got it playing with an Obscurus, or some damned thing like it."

"Some damned thing, yes." He leans on the doorframe, looking pointedly over Albus' shoulder. Sighing, Albus stands aside for him to enter. "I suppose your little pet told you all about it. Between the sheets, perhaps."

Well, maybe there are two things that might hurt. "He told me you seemed unduly interested in my relationship with him, yes."

It's rubbish, of course. Newt can barely even sustain _necessary_ interaction. It was only through sheer persistent bloody-mindedness on the Lestrange girl's part that the man isn't still a virgin. Not that he intends to tell Gellert _that._

He's always liked Gellert jealous.

"You can bed every callow youth at Hogwart's for all I care," Gellert says easily, his cheek flickering again, as he passes over the threshold. He pauses deliberately in Albus' space while Albus closes the door.

"Like Credence Barebone, I suppose," Albus fires back, turning back against the door. It's pretty much a random shot, but it hits. He sees it in Gellert's eyes. "Just can't keep away from the dark, can you?"

"No," Gellert says reflectively. "Just like you." He leans his arm on the door, leaning in. Albus can feel his heat, and it's heavy, oppressive. Gellert suffocates him, just by _being._ He always has.

"No small talk, Gellert?" he chides. "No enquiry about the intervening years?"

"I don't see you enquiring about my detention at MACUSA's pleasure, or how it is that I'm no longer there," Gellert says. "Niceties are wasted on the great."

"Well, you'd know, I suppose," Albus says sourly, with more than a shade of sarcasm. 

"Now, now," Gellert chides. He brings his body in closer. "Are you going to turn me in?"

"Eventually," Albus says. "Are you going to hurt me?"

"Probably," Gellert says. "Are we going to-"

 _"Yes,"_ Albus hisses, and then Gellert's lips are on his.

The first time is like every first time, urgent, clamouring. Shoving and grinding. Grasping and gasping and collapsing against the door when they're done.

There's never any finesse between them. Not the first time. The first time is a purge, an exorcism of whatever they've done since the time before. For Albus, this time is an exorcism of the way Gellert has unseated the world on its foundations. For Gellert, it's that Albus…hasn't.

Albus makes tea when they're done, and brings it to where Gellert sits on the floor, half-dressed, his back against the door. 

Gellert reaches up and takes it. "Tea," he murmurs. "How very British."

"Well, I don't have Akvavit." Albus stands beside him, leaning against the door, cupping his drink in both hands. Gellert's head leans against his leg, an everyday gesture. Like they were lovers. Not like…whatever they are.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Gellert says.

Albus doesn't answer for a while, but presently, he says, "I'm thinking you need to stop all this, Gellert. This…mayhem. You know I'm going to have to stop you, sooner or later, if you don't."

There is warmth in Gellert's voice. "And what a fine day that will be, Albus. A fine day indeed."

Albus brings his cup down into his saucer with a clatter. "Damn it all, Gellert. Why do you _want_ me to come after you?"

Gellert's clatter too. "Because I want to see you _alive_ again, damn it!"

Albus stares down at him. It is more passion than he's heard from Gellert - real, uncontrolled passion - in years.

"It's true," Gellert says, looking up at him, eyes ablaze. "You pay for Ariana's life with your own. You haven't been alive since the day she died."

"And shouldn't I?" he demands. "Am I not the one who killed her? You know, Gellert, don't you?"

"I don't know," Gellert says, and his cheek flickers. "It was none of us. All of us. It doesn't matter who it was. It can't be changed. Build a world where people like her don't have to be locked away. Do it with me. Honour her with me."

"I honour her by being a better man than the one who killed her," Albus mutters, looking away.

"So you prize your individuality over the collective, then. You could make the world better by living with what you've done and what that makes you and being your greatest self anyway, but you won't. It isn't noble," Gellert taunts, "it's selfish. You're selfish."

"I am not selfish," Albus flares, staring down at him once more.

"Oh, but you are," Gellert says silkily. "You are." Slowly, not breaking eye contact, he gets to his feet. Leans against the door, mirroring Albus. "When you come after me at last, Albus, you'll be putting the collective ahead of your own desires at last. Then, at last, you will be great."

"I'm going to cut you down," Albus hisses. Unable to break away from his gaze.

"Maybe," Gellert agrees. "And maybe I'll cut you."

"Maybe we'll cut each other."

"Maybe we will. Maybe that will be the greatest thing of all." 

The gleam in Gellert's eyes tells dark truths, of two stars sharing an orbit, stars dark and molten. Stars drawn ever inward, collapsing on one another. Stars that collide and explode, leaving a void so dense that it swallows the light.

He thinks maybe that's why they've been cutting one another all along. They're dying stars, both of them. Making each other expand and contract. Building the forces that will destroy them both. Forces of nature destined to burn each other alive.

Maybe it is inevitable, this. All of this. If so, maybe he can forgive. Forgive them both. 

One day.

"Fuck me," he says softly, diffidently. He says it like _love me._

Gellert hears it. All the calculation seems to fall out of his face. Even that continual half-smirk falls away. 

"All right," he says, taking Albus' hand. He says it like _I love you._

Albus leads him to the stairs, to the observatory platform, to the daybed beneath the window. Beneath the stars.

And beneath the stars, slowly, they collide. 

END

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Inspired very much by Gellert's behaviour in Fantastic Beasts (mostly Colin Farrell's interpretation while Gellert was posing as Graves). In particular, his tone when questioning why Dumbledore had defended Newt, and his rather seductive manner with Credence. I could definitely see him having been similarly seductive to Albus when they were together at Godric's Hollow.
> 
> 2\. I have no view, at this stage, on whether Gellert really knows who killed Ariana. I think it's at least possible he's deliberately appearing to lie - that is, he wants Albus to fear being told the truth one day so he has that in his back pocket as a weapon if Albus does one day try to stop him. I think the anarchist in Gellert very much wants Albus's power unleashed, exactly as he says, but that doesn't mean he won't fight back. 
> 
> 3\. The star metaphor is basically the death process of a giant star, after a stellar collision, resulting in the formation of a black hole. It's also the sum total of my understanding of the topic. I'm not an astronomy expert.
> 
> 4\. My head-canon is that this story explains Albus' ongoing fixation on astronomy in the films and games. I originally cottoned onto this through the Lego games, which include a massive model of the universe in Dumbledore's office that can be destroyed to get the character token for Dumbledore (Grey). But once I started looking up film stills I found that there are an enormous number of astronomy items littered throughout his office, almost to the point of obsession. There's virtually nowhere you can stand there, and no angle, where there aren't at least a couple in view. So I'm now interpreting that as a reflection of Albus' lingering obsession with Gellert and his inability to express or process it in any other way. It could also be argued that in the film version, Albus chose to await his fate in Astronomy Tower (although in the books he and Harry followed the Dark Mark put over the Tower by Gibbons).
> 
> 5\. For convenience, I have assumed here that Albus' study when he was a professor is either the same as, or substantially similar to his one as headmaster. That is, either the headmaster can choose his own quarters and Dumbledore chose to keep the one he'd had for decades, or there are a number of quarters with similar layouts, so he was able to decorate the headmaster's quarters similarly to his previous quarters. I have also assumed that his living quarters connect to his study. In the Lego games, there is what looks like the beginning of living quarters accessed from downward stairs behind Dumbledore's desk.
> 
> 6\. Akvavit is a Norwegian drink. Gellert went to Durmstrang, which is thought to be in either Norway or Sweden, and young Gellert was described as fair, so I've extrapolated that he may be of Scandinavian extraction, or at least influenced by it.


End file.
